Speaking to the Tsinghua University in Beijing, Zuckerberg was dressed in his standard gray t-shirt and jeans. He spoke about why he had created Facebook and what was driving him to continue running the company through its rough times. He posted a video of the speech with English subtitles on Sunday, saying it was “my first ever speech in Chinese.”
Forbes reports that Zuckerberg has been learning Chinese for several years and surprised the public in October last year when he carried out a Q&A at Tsinghua entirely in Mandarin. Zuckerberg said he learned the language to help communicate with his wife Priscilla’s paternal grandmother, but his new multilingual abilities should also help with any attempts to get into the closed Chinese market. China’s had blocked Facebook when independence activists used the site to communicate during a series of riots in the north-west city of Urumqi. Texts and internet access was blocked throughout the riots, but while the internet was eventually restored, access to Twitter and Facebook were shut out across the nation.
